The Rounds Video Chat App, standalone for iPhone and Android, is finally here! Previously only available on Facebook, you can now download Rounds –for FREE!

Back in June we wrote about Rounds, formerly a Facebook-only phenomenon that had raised raised a total of $5.5 million in funding from industry leading investors, including Verizon Ventures, Rhodium, DFJ’s Tim Draper, and other private investors to become a Rounds standalone app. The capital was going to turn Rounds into a a standalone app; but no ETA had been announced. Today the company quietly launched the Rounds video chat app as a standalone app available on iPhone and Android –I couldn’t be any more excited!

Rounds is the first ever “Mobile Hangout Network.” Users can hang out and share media while video chatting with their mobile contacts and Facebook friends — including watching YouTube videos together; switching between five unique view modes, even adding crazy video effects; uploading photos to view together; taking snapshots, sharing moments and even use your phone’s touchscreen to scribble over each other’s live video streams and photos with a virtual marker.

With the Rounds video chat app, Rounds is able to combine online entertainment with video communication (“communitainment”) to bring friends and like-minded people closer together for a fun, live experience across social networks, operating systems and devices. Bridging the offline and online worlds, Rounds uses shared activities, games and video to give friends the feeling of ‘hanging out’ in real life. An interactive stream of friends’ and featured users’ “captured moments” from live sessions gives hangouts an afterlife, creating a new social network around them.

Use the Rounds video chat hangout to connect with your family and friends. Here’s how it works:

Use fun webcam effects and take funny photobooth snapshots with different video effects

Take photo booth snapshots of you and your friends while you are video calling

Scribble on your friends video images. Draw something funny and take a photo snapshot together

5 different view modes. Use the transparent view mode to take a snapshot as if you are in the same room

The team behind Rounds is a Tel Aviv Company (learn about Technology in Israel). Their executive Vice President, Oren Levy explained: “Rounds is a hangout platform, and our mission is to take the experience of hanging out in the real world and bring it to the online world.” He adds that the apps main aim is to make for a fun environment. And fun it is: Rounds for Facebook had an estimated user base of one million users per day with most users averaging about 40 minutes on the app!

Visit Rounds to download Rounds video chat app mobile, now available for iPhone and Android for FREE!